News Release Number: STScI-2013-25

Hubble Shows Link Between Stars' Ages and Their Orbits in Dense Cluster

July 18, 2013: Billions of years ago in our Milky Way galaxy, long before the Earth was
born, swarms of stars formed in giant clusters. Each grouping of stars,
called a globular cluster, was held together by the mutual gravity of its stars. These
globular star clusters became the homesteaders of our Milky Way.

Astronomers have probed the galaxy's globular clusters using many
telescopes, including NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, to dig into the
Milky Way's past and uncover what was happening in these early, formative years. Recent stellar archaeological excavations with Hubble
into one such globular cluster, 47 Tucanae, have allowed astronomers to
piece together a timeline of the stars' births.